All of us have learnt about sensitive plants like the mimosa. They close themselves when touched. As kids, we used to find that very amusing. And as grown ups now, it is equally amusing to find people with so much of sensitivity. As Vishwas, a brother in church once told me, ‘I find people become more sensitive after accepting the Lord.’ As I pondered over it, I found it to be a fact. We can find ‘touch me nots’ more in the church than what we may find in the world outside. All of us, somewhere down the line, feel bad about almost everything and anything thrown at us, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally.
We feel bad about not being smiled at, not spoken to, not taken extra care of, our needs not being noticed, being discussed in our absence, being addressed in our presence, and so much more!! And each one of us has gone through this phase at some point of our Christian life in our fellowship with our spiritual family. Some of us have matured through it while some of us prefer to remain stuck down there.
Most of the sensitive people would be the old members who demand personal attention for everything. The scenario should actually be the other way around; the new members should be given more love, care and attention by the older members. That’s how we work together in the family of Christ. Not putting down one another, but encouraging one another. When we gossip and not be open about how we feel, we create barriers for ourselves. Much of those barriers are unnecessary and wouldn’t have ever existed if we were open and clear in our communication with each other.
Philippians 2 : 1 - 7
Hebrews 5 : 12 - 14
When God was dealing with this issue in me, I realised why did I feel so bad about little things that shouldn’t make a difference? And God showed me the answer through my mom. When I see her serving people in the church, as their spiritual mother, I see her love for them just as her love for my sister and me. I don’t find her service for them any different from all that she does for us. When I learned to embrace people as they are and love them, even though we do not belong to the same biological family, I found it easier to accept correction from people, take jokes lightly and be open about how I felt. I realised that just as you can’t develop a close bond with every other person in your family, you might not be able to bond closely with everyone in your spiritual family. In spite of it, the love of Christ keeps us bound and even if we are not closely bound, we can still be available for each other to help, love, care, share and pray. When we view our spiritual family like our biological family, we’ll be able to stand by each other at all times with unconditional love. My mom has always taught me that the spiritual family is as important as the biological family and she has lived by it.
1 John 4 : 7 - 21
